Beyond the Waves by Elizabeth Marek

Author:Elizabeth Marek
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2011-11-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twelve

The noises of the others are loud, but they no longer frighten Miranda. She sees them with their staring eyes, hears their snorts and groans and sighs, and knows that they are nothing more than people who will not hurt her. She is here, waiting for her mother (not-mother), who will come soon. Her father will come, too. He will clutch her hand and then let go. She smiles inside herself because she knows that he is the one who is afraid. The smile does not show on her face. It makes him angry, her strong smile, and she has learned to smile it only where it cannot be seen. She has learned many things, she thinks, and she hears a voice inside her mind: You have a lot to learn, little girl. A lot to learn.

Miranda watches through the window, sees the people walking along the crowded sidewalk. Her mother had swum into that current of motion, had gotten swept away. She listens for her mother’s footsteps, but they are lost in the hum of traffic. Worried now, she stamps her feet—stomp, stomp, stomp on the floor—and calms at once as the sound comes into her ear. Satisfied, she hums to herself, and it feels like closing a door.

She is waiting for her mother, who will take her to her first day of school. Her mother is late. Miranda goes to the hallway, where she sits in a chair and rubs her fingers against the smooth red vinyl. Look around, her father says in her mind. This is what you wanted. This is what you got.

Miranda looks around. Her eyes pass over the black and white squares of linoleum, the feet in scuffed shoes shuffling by. There is a window inside that is covered with glass, and the woman in the window has a smile that is not strong or scared but maybe kind. Beware the kindness of strangers, she thinks. Beware of the dog. Beware. Be where. Be where? And although she is here, is where she wanted to be, it no longer feels as it did in her mind. As though in the getting, the wanting itself had changed, into a feeling that frightened her. Her heart beats too fast and her stomach hurts. She chews on the inside of her cheek, clenches down hard, tastes the tinny tang of blood. Let’s go, she wants to say, but the wanting itself holds danger. This is what you wanted, her father says, and his eyes are not kind at all. I want to go home. But the words are inside her and she has forgotten how to speak.

When Abby comes at last, Miranda smells her soap-clean scent and hears the click-click of her shoes but does not open her eyes. The flute voice is in the air, but Miranda wills the words into music and begins to rock. Her father’s voice first halts the music, then rides along with it, like a dolphin coasting on the crest

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